The present disclosure relates generally to a method for performing new material development and in particular, to a method of performing simulation for new material development.
Developing new materials for introduction into commercial products can be a lengthy process that includes numerous simulations as well as experimental testing of various properties associated with the new material. An increasing number of software tools exist on the marketplace to perform particular components of simulation related to a new material. These tools have been customized to perform particular parts of the simulation process. For example, software material development modules used in simulation are customized to perform flow stress simulation, tensile modeling, heat treatment simulation and error propagation. These modules are often from different vendors and use different data formats and user interfaces. Users, such as designers and material developers, must be familiar with the data format requirements of each module and must learn a variety of user interfaces in order to execute a simulation that involves more than one module or tool. In addition, these modules may be executed on different computer platforms by different users and the associated data may be stored in a variety of locations. Again, this can place a burden on the designers and material developers to be knowledgeable about a variety of computer platforms and to find the correct version of the data for input to the simulation. Tracking the data associated with a particular material through all simulation runs and assessing a status of the material midway through the material development testing is difficult because of the variety of tools and data locations. Therefore, typically, the new material is released for use in a product and its attributes are described to the product designers after all of the simulation and testing has been completed by the material developers.